Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books eBook

Back to democratic-ness. Every successful new
medium has traded off its artifact-ness —­
the degree to which it was populated by bespoke hunks
of atoms, cleverly nailed together by master craftspeople
—­ for ease of reproduction. Piano rolls
weren’t as expressive as good piano players,
but they scaled better —­ as did radio broadcasts,
pulp magazines, and MP3s. Liner notes, hand illumination
and leather bindings are nice, but they pale in comparison
to the ability of an individual to actually get a
copy of her own.

Which isn’t to say that old media die.
Artists still hand-illuminate books; master pianists
still stride the boards at Carnegie Hall, and the
shelves burst with tell-all biographies of musicians
that are richer in detail than any liner-notes booklet.
The thing is, when all you’ve got is monks, every
book takes on the character of a monkish Bible.
Once you invent the printing press, all the books
that are better-suited to movable type migrate into
that new form. What’s left behind are those
items that are best suited to the old production scheme:
the plays that need to be plays, the books
that are especially lovely on creamy paper stitched
between covers, the music that is most enjoyable performed
live and experienced in a throng of humanity.

Increased democratic-ness translates into decreased
control: it’s a lot harder to control who
can copy a book once there’s a photocopier on
every corner than it is when you need a monastery
and several years to copy a Bible. And that decreased
control demands a new copyright regime that rebalances
the rights of creators with their audiences.

For example, when the VCR was invented, the courts
affirmed a new copyright exemption for time-shifting;
when the radio was invented, the Congress granted
an anti-trust exemption to the record labels in order
to secure a blanket license; when cable TV was invented,
the government just ordered the broadcasters to sell
the cable-operators access to programming at a fixed
rate.

Copyright is perennially out of date, because its
latest rev was generated in response to the last generation
of technology. The temptation to treat copyright
as though it came down off the mountain on two stone
tablets (or worse, as “just like” real
property) is deeply flawed, since, by definition, current
copyright only considers the last generation of tech.

So, are bookwarez in violation of copyright law?
Duh. Is this the end of the world? Duh.
If the Catholic church can survive the printing press,
science fiction will certainly weather the advent
of bookwarez.

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Lagniappe [Lagniappe]

We’re almost done here, but there’s one
more thing I’d like to do before I get off the
stage. [Lagniappe: an unexpected bonus or extra]
Think of it as a “lagniappe” —­
a little something extra to thank you for your patience.

About a year ago, I released my first novel, Down
and Out in the Magic Kingdom, on the net, under the
terms of the most restrictive Creative Commons license
available. All it allowed my readers to do was
send around copies of the book. I was cautiously
dipping my toe into the water, though at the time,
it felt like I was taking a plunge.